- Roger 4807, approaching runway seven bravo. - The air force has announced the creation of a new information operations technical training school. - So, in our business, national security, where our job is to fly fight when, we'd better be masters at this game of innovation. Air force basing military training has an updated curriculum with a new focus on readiness and lethality. - This is the Developing Mach 21 Airmen podcast. (banging) - Hey everybody, welcome in to episode three of Developing Mach 21 Airmen. Thanks for the subscribe, stream, or download listening today. If ya have little extra time and wanna throw some stars or even a review, we certainly would appreciate that as well. I'll take five stars if you got 'em. My name is Dan Hawkins from the Air Education and Training Commands Public Affairs Office, and your host for this professional development podcast dedicated to bringing total force, big A Airmen, insight, tips, tricks, and lessons learned from the recruiting, training, and education field. Great stuff here on episode three. The command historian for AETC, Mr. Gary Boyd, as well as Bill Manchester, the director of museums at JBSA-Lackland and an AETC staff historian, they sit down with us to talk about a concept called the Airmen Heritage Training Complex, which is a project aimed at creating a new, state-of-the-art facility to highlight and learn from the sacrifices and achievements of our enlisted force to better acculturate Airmen attending basic and initial skills training. Pretty exciting stuff, and interestingly enough, the beauty of this effort, which is a collaboration between the air force and public partners, is that it ties into each aspect of the AETC mission to include recruiting, training, educating, and developing the force. Location-wise, the team is working on a concept to put the new Airmen Heritage Training Complex Campus on Kelly Field in conjunction with Port San Antonio, and there's a couple of big reasons why. The first one is the fact that San Antonio is such a great central location and has a natural, build-in audience. JBSA-Lackland, the gateway to the air force, has hundreds of Airmen graduating BMT each week, and it brings in a lot of volume traffic when you think about the families and friends that come to be a part of that celebration as Airmen enter the world's greatest air force and want to do things that are associated with the air force, so obviously, bringing that traffic to a facility such as the Airmen Heritage Training Complex would be a boon in terms of availability. The second is the opportunity to use Second Air Force's next generation concepts and designs for active learning as an opportunity to potentially recruit the next generation of young people that we need to staff the air force. So, here's Mr. Boyd and Mr. Manchester to talk all things about this new facility. Off we go with episode three of Developing Mach 21 Airmen. (swooshing) - Alright, so Gary, tell us a little bit about yourself. - Okay, I'm Gary Boyd, the director of AETC's history and museums program. I am in charge of about 170 plus static display aircraft, 20 different wings and groups, the historians and historical property custodians, and I'm kind of the heritage go-to person for the entire command. - And how long have you been with the AETC? - I've been, I started in the AETC in 1988, but I came back in 2012 after stunt at AFPC as our career field team manager for the history program. - And, Bill, you have pretty extensive experience in the history department as well. - Well, I have a little bit of limited extension history. I have been a historian here with AETC for two years. I'm currently the director of the Airmen Heritage Training Complex, which consists of the two museums at Lackland, the air park, and the warehouse, which stores a lot of our artifacts. Prior to that, I was in the army for 30 years, and at that time, I was also the curator and museum specialist for the Fort Sam Houston Museum at one time, so I've only been with the air force for two years, but my passion for the country and my passion for serving our nation has never let down, and so here I find myself switching into the blue and doin' a great job, I think, at it. - Well, today, we're gonna talk about some really exciting times when it comes to our enlisted heritage. We talked a little bit before the podcast, but how every Airman, at least the enlisted Airmen, that comes into the air force rolls through those historic archways at Lackland, the gateway to the air force, and with the speed of Mach 21 Airmen today, sometimes it's important to take a step back and think about the people that came before you to build our air force to what it is today. So, interestingly enough, I think that's a passion that's shared by not only General Kwast, our commander here at AETC, but Chief Gudgel as well. - In fact, thanks to General Kwast and Chief Gudgel, I think it's put us into what I'd consider overdrive momentum towards modernizing the facilities that we have and using heritage as a lucrative training asset for the command and for Airmen. Airmen come through, and it's always been assumed that they did not have the same esprit de corps as, say, the marines or the army because they tended to identify with their AFSCs more than the service for which they were connected, so there's a real need to acculturate Airmen better into what it means to be an Airman, and we look at Airman as innovators, as role models, as technical experts, and ready to do the nation's bidding at a moment's notice, all within the core values, so we wanna try and acculturate Airmen to what it was to be the best Airman in the air force from 1907 to today. - And it's interesting because Mr. Boyd talked about acculturation in different services. Having served in the army and seein' how that went, seein' the air force, we know that we have a long, historic history. We know there's a passion for everything that we've done through out history, and it's our job as historians, as museum personnel, to insure we translate that to these young people, so that they see, hey, the people that came before me were so important, so special, and they did so many great things, that I can aspire to be that type of Airman and kind of seize on that Airman for life thought, philosophy, that when I retire, if you see a retired marine nowadays, he's decked out head to toe with Marine regalia, and we think Airmen should feel the same way and as proud of the service that they've served in for everything that they've done. - Well, I'm in line with that. You guys are workin' on a very exciting project. The Airmen Heritage Training Complex, and this is a project that has been a long time coming, so could you kinda tell us, maybe, what the current state of our museums are here in San Antonio and then what the plans, looking ahead, big picture are? - Absolutely. Few people realize it, but we have the oldest museum in the air force, even older than the national museum, and it's been in the same building since the mid-50s. What we really needed was kind of a new idea, a new way forward, and what we've done, using General Kwast and Chief Gudgel as our advocates, we've combined the resources of about six different foundations with the same goal with the idea that we will locate a new training complex on Kelly Field, which is adjacent to Lackland, that will be open to the general public, that will be in the middle of an innovation center at Port San Antonio, and while we're acculturating Airmen, we'll also have our heritage artifacts there for innovators to look at, to learn the lessons of the past when looking at trying to design technology for the future. - So, with the new Airmen Heritage Training Complex at Kelly, we open up that west side of San Antonio. We're gonna be at Port San Antonio. We're gonna have easy access. Currently, to access Lackland is a bit of a struggle for those personnel that don't have a government ID card, so this'll allow more people to visit, more people to see the Airmen story, and of course, this goes hand in hand with recruiting. We know that as we bring more people to see how the air force and how our Airmen operate, is only gonna take with them a sense of pride. Today, currently, on Thursdays, families are allowed to be with their Airmen, and they're not allowed to leave base, so a lotta times, we see them at the museums. They'll be at the Security Forces Annex where the Airmen Heritage Museum on Lackland as it currently sit, and what we see there is we see a lot of family members, and we know that those family members are doin' the recruiting process for us because they're seein' their Airmen, they're proud of their Airmen, they're proud of what they've done and what they've accomplished, and they're takin' that sense of seein' the history back home with them to their friends and family and sayin' hey, my son or my daughter or my Airman did this, why don't you talk to your son or daughter or brother or sister or something, so we know that there's a multiplier for recruiting that the museums can allow this to happen, and we have, we're gonna speak with, we've spoken with Air Force Recruiting Service, and we're gonna meet with them today. We're gonna talk with them more in depth about how we can insure that recruiting's involved in this 'cause not only is it a tool to acculturate our Airmen and to get them a sense of pride and where they've come from, but this is somethin' that's gonna allow us to move to the future, and as Gary talked about and he'll continue to talk about every time he speaks, this allows us not only to, this new facility on Port San Antonio and Kelly will allow us to not only bring recruiting for Airmen but recruiting for the aviation industry as a whole, so we know that some people are gonna come to the Airmen Heritage Training Complex and see different displays and see different innovative ideas, and they may not want a career in the military, they may not want to be an Airman, per se, in a uniform, but they may want to be in the aviation industry, and that helps us all. I mean, we know that Airmen are the key, the backbone to what we do here in the air force, but we also know that there's a large civilian sector, which drives a lot of the things that we do in the air force, so I mean, the Airmen Heritage Training Complex at Kelly, as we see it, as we envision it, we'll bring together a bunch of, not only young people that will have a vision of serving in the air force in the uniform, but also in the air industry, so I think it's a key to what we're gonna do out there at Kelly. - And I think we'd be remiss not to talk about even the recent BMT curriculum changes. One of their pillars that they decided to really focus on was that warrior ethos and heritage, and they've incorporated heritage into almost everything they do at basic training, whether it's the obstacle course, their daily PT sessions, daily reads inside their unit rooms during their time with their MTIs. It's really so important that we remember that and so great that you guys are working hard to make sure that a project of this nature is happening. So, you talked a little bit about that this is a project long time in the making, so could you kind of talk about some of the major players who are making this project happen and how it kinda came together? - Well, there're several players, several foundations. Our own Airmen Heritage Foundation, the Security Forces Foundation, the San Antonio Aviation Heritage Foundation, the Air Force and Fighter Aces Association with Ed Garland. These people all had a vision, which was to build a destination museum, and it wasn't too far distant from what we wanted to do, and so rather than working at cross purposes, trying to raise money from the same sources and all of us failing, by combining and sharing a vision and sharing a facility, we decided that we could actually arrange and reach some of the goals that had been sought for decades, and there was already plans afoot at Port San Antonio to create an innovation campus around old Kelly Field, and that helps us because innovators and Airmen are one and one, frankly, and so by being in the middle of this innovation campus we will be able to bring together the best of STEM education, the best of STEM museums which already exist in Kelly, and we can combine our efforts, combine our artifacts, to help in some of the future breakthroughs, and we can raise money as a team rather than as competitors, and frankly, we've got a memorandum of understanding to work together. We worked at the Witte just this last Friday with some of the leading museum minds in San Antonio, and we're gonna work on a proof of concept exhibit by 2020 at the Witte, which will combine some of the ideas, some of the high tech, interactive exhibits our Airmen deserve and some of the high tech, interactive exhibits that the aviation industry would like to bring and the Witte will bring, and you'll get to see kind of a small version of what it is, what our ultimate goal is, in about a year and a half. - And for those who don't know, maybe give just a brief snapshot. The Witte Museum is a big deal. - The Witte Museum is a big deal. They, downtown, have tens of thousands of feet dedicated to science, industry, paleontology, natural science, and they're gonna give us 6,000 feet to work with and to improvise what it means to be a gateway Airman. Now, remember, military aviation began in San Antonio, and the gateway to the air force is, 83% of the Airmen come through us to this day, but San Antonio has an outsize reputation and legacy in air force history because this is the center of all aviation in the air force and in the United States, so it's about time that we had a world-class facility for people to visit. - Exactly, and so we envision that with the Witte exhibit, and then moving on to the larger Airmen Heritage Training Complex at Kelly, we'll be able to tie in that history, that heritage, with innovation. I mean, there's nothing like looking at a piece of history and realizin' how that was innovative for its time, how it influenced the Airmen of that time, and then to be able to move that to the future, so we want to tie that history and heritage with our future and innovation, and speaking with Chief Gudgel, and she'll remind, every time I talk to her, she'll remind everyone that's there that by the seventh grade most young people have decided on what kind of career, which projection forward in their life their going to be, and so our target audience will be, of course, primarily, first and foremost, Airmen. We wanna educate our Airmen, acculturate our Airmen, make sure they understand their heritage, so that they can move forward and be a part, a growing part, of that heritage, but at the same time we wanna be able to bring in young people, young groups, young school groups, so that we can help influence or help them make them make decisions based upon what they see within the facility, within the Airmen Heritage Training Complex, to make that choice, like we talked about, whether to become an Airman or become something in the aviation industry, so it's a win-win for everyone involved, with San Antonio and the city, with the partnerships that we've had with these different foundations. Everyone has the opportunity to put their piece in there, to share their knowledge, and to be able to develop and recruit young people but not only recruit, develop young minds, and like Mr. Boyd had said earlier, the outcome of this Airmen Heritage Training Complex, along with all the facilities that will be on Port San Antonio and Kelly, the ultimate goal would be to have some type of school, charter school, science and technology related school, that we can use to help develop those young minds on the west side of San Antonio. - Because it's on Kelly, we'll be able to fly aircraft in. Because it's on Kelly, we'll be able to utilize the science and technology museum that's already there. Because it's on Kelly, we'll be able to use the innovation centers, the cyber centers. There's a lot of exciting things happening in the fort right now. They have money set aside to have things like drone races, cyber meets, and they want to draw as much high tech industry as they can to San Antonio, and it makes sense, right? The weather here was perfect for aviation. It's also perfect as a destination for tourism, and it's also perfect as a destination for real business and for wares. There's nothing wrong with the upper and mid west. It's certainly easier to fly into San Antonio in February right now and talk about some widget you wanna manufacture. - Right. - And maybe take a look at the computer gun sights on a B-29. (laughs) - And we can combine all that, and like Mr. Boyd said, this city, it's seventh largest city in the country. I mean, the conference center and the conventions that roll through here regularly. I mean, if we become a destination museum - 30 million tourists. that people are coming to see. They're comin' to visit. They're gettin' that sense of what it means to be an Airman, what the heritage and history of that is. That'd be prouder Americans for sure, but like I said, it's always lookin' at we are gonna do. We need to be able to reach out to the public and have that public welcome us when that means recruiting. When we're talking recruiting, we're talking young people coming in. The more people that know about us, the more people that come and see us, the more people that understand the mission that we do and how important it is to this nation's defense. I think will, they'll spread that word throughout the country. - And the important thing that I want to be able to do for Airmen is, first of all, upgrade the facilities, which I think is absolutely critical. Gateway to the air force, it's an embarrassment to me to have 70, 80 year old buildings, but I want an Airman to be ready, and I think that's what makes the best Airmen in history. To me the differentiator between a Joe Schmoe and, say, a John Chapman is the ability to act in a moment's notice and to be ready for the moment, so we wanted to have a ring of honor that highlights the very best Airmen who ever existed, and that's open to debate, which is great, and the beauty is, too, you can move people in and out of this room just because you want to try and emphasize different things, but ultimately we want an Airman to look at, say, a Forrest Vosler and understand why it was so important to be such a technical expert that you could take apart your radio even blind and save your crew. I mean that, these kinds of heritage lessons are absolutely essential, and if we could bring together a holographic Forrest Vosler, that would be terrific. Our Airmen deserve it, and I want us to have the money, resources, and room to stretch out, to do what we should have always been doing in the heritage community. - I think that's what's really so neat about this project is, is when you break everything down and take it across the span of the recruit, train, educate, and develop the force mission that AETC has, there's piece in it for everybody and a reason why everybody needs to be on board and behind this great project. - And I agree, and so that's why when we talked about it, when this kinda took off within the last year or so, Mr. Boyd, we had talked about the idea. We don't wanna call it the Airmen Heritage Museum or the Security Forces Museum Annex or what have you. The Airmen Heritage Training Complex comprises both of those facilities and the air park and the warehouse currently, but in the future, it's gonna be exactly that: a training complex where we can train our young Airmen, where they can go and learn about their past and the heritage that's behind those individuals who have made us the air force that we are today, and that's why it's key to remember Airmen Heritage Training Complex. We don't want it to be just a museum. We don't wanna call it just that. We want it to be what it is. It's a training complex where we can all learn and grow. We can take from the past to learn for the future, and we can move forward with that. - That's what's great about history is when you can make it alive, right? Like, that's kind of the point. - Exactly right, and today's audience demands that, and incidentally, complex is the right word too because we're gonna still have our static display aircraft around the parade field at Lackland, which is one of the great vistas in all the military, and we're making it greater every day thanks to Bill. We're trying to get these aircraft rehabilitated, but ultimately, we wanna have Airmen talk about the aircraft they were assigned. We wanna have living tours of those aircraft, and we wanna move back and forth shuttling Airmen between Kelly and Lackland and letting them understand that Kelly is basically the birthplace of the modern air force, and Lackland is the birthplace of tomorrow because our Airmen are always coming through, always innovating, and always moving on. It's a constant cycle here, and I think history, it's kinda been pushed aside a bit because of the continuous needs of the pipeline, but frankly, the pipeline needs history, and we needed to reemphasize our role to train that pipeline as well, so it's been a learning process for all of us, and I think we're really in a good common sight picture now. - Yeah, exactly, and we see, even today, numerous MTIs, MTLs, people will reach back to us for that help, for that history, so that we can provide them some outreach, so that we can provide them with, whether it be museum support articles, mannequins so they can dress them up in certain period uniforms. I mean, we outreach today with those Airmen on Lackland, and it's neat to see that Airmen actually have, they have a passion for it. They have a passion for their history. They have a passion for who they are. The security forces, when they graduate a class every Thursday, show up at the Security Forces Museum Annex, and when they do pushups, when their done with their pushup, they'll give a little blurb about some security forces personnel from the past who did something tremendous in their air force career, so it's exciting to see young Airmen invigorated by their past, and so we wanna be able to provide them with a state-of-the-art facility that they can relate to because if you go to a museum, and it's easy to look at artifacts behind a case and to hear the story and see the story, but if we can get them interacting with the story and becoming one with that, I think it's gonna be neat. - So, so much goodness here. Where does this project, where are we actually at? What in the grand scheme of things is the time line as we move forward to try to make these things happen? - You're gonna see some rapid movement. The support San Antonio's already looking at rehabilitating a warehouse to make it into an innovation center, and they promised to give us a piece of that on an interim basis until the new facility can be built, but all six of the foundations have come together, and let me say thank you to Chief Gudgel on this because Doug King, who ran this San Antonio Aviation Heritage Foundation, came to us, and he had this great background working with the Museum of Flight and the Challenger Schools and the Smithsonian. - The Smithsonian. He's worked in some of the highest circles of aviation heritage foundations, and she said to me that she didn't care what the obstacles were, but we couldn't lose this chance to work with a real professional like himself, and I'll give Doug a lot of credit because he has assuaged a lot of the fears and competition anxiety that might have existed within our independent foundations, and now we're all working to a common goal, and I think once you see a building raise up into the skyline, then we're gonna have, I'll gladly turn the keys over to anybody. At that point, that, to me that would be the highlight of my whole, 40 plus years of, at that point, air force history background. I mean, I started, I've got more than 30 years now, and I think by the time this is open, I'll be at the end of my career, and I'll be so excited, I'll come back as a volunteer. (laughs) - And again, we can't say enough about General Kwast and Chief Gudgel's input to this. Their drive, their desire to make this an important part of our Airmen's heritage can't be lost. It's just incredible that we have that backing from the command, but again, with Mr. Doug King, a consummate professional, a calming influence in a stormy, turmoilous type of area where you have different foundations with competing views and competing ideas on how things should be done. He's brought it all together, and he's tied it in real nicely. So you can't tie us down to an exact date or time for this. We do know that in 2020 we plan on having the exhibit in the Witte, as we said kind of a kick off, and, (stammers) what's the word we're usin'? - Basically, a proof of concept. - Proof of concept, and then we'll go from there. We'll see what moves from there. - But there're a couple other good things to highlight. I got to speak to the port authority, and Port San Antonio has given us the go ahead. We have land ceded to this project. They're excited because they believe that this will be an anchor for this whole innovation community that they're building on Kelly, and let me just say that it will be respectful of Kelly's great and long history as well, but there's a lot of room for new growth there and a need for it. San Antonio should lead the way in aviation-related technology, innovation centers, and the rest. I look at it as probably where an AFWERX should be because we're in the middle of the country, we're a destination area, we've got the gateway to the air force, we've got all these great Airmen that come through and come back. You know there's also that great retired community here. So, where there's a lot for us to draw on, the fact that we don't already have a tremendous gateway heritage complex is an embarrassment to me because I just feel like we lack vision and focus because certainly the will is there. There's not been a single person I've talked to who isn't excited about helping Airmen. Everybody's excited, and let me just say the Witte's excited, Port of San Antonio's excited. They all wanna help the air force. They all see how important our national defense mission is, and they wanna facilitate that, and they are all so grateful to us. The fact that we haven't, to this point, kinda motivated the inevitable is, like I say, a lack of vision on the part of my predecessors, but General Kwast Chief Gudgel, lack of vision is not something they will ever be accused. (laughs) I mean, to put it quite succinctly and honestly, they are visionaries. Certainly. - Well, it's certainly going to be very exciting for big A Airmen no matter civilian, active duty, officer, enlisted. I think it's going to be just an exciting project, and I can't thank you guys enough for stopping by today to talk with us about it. - Thanks again. - You're welcome. (dramatic banging) - So there ya have it! Thanks for tunin' here on episode-- (loud banging) Developing Mach 21 Airmen as we dive into the world of recruiting, training, and education. Special thanks to both Mr. Boyd and Mr. Manchester for hanging out with us today and talking about this great initiative. Don't forget, if you have a DoD identification card, you can stop by the Security Forces Annex or the air park at JBSA-Lackland any time. You don't have to wait for that new complex. They're always happy to have visitors, so feel free to stop on by. As a reminder, you can follow Air Education and Training Command via social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as on the web at www.aetc.af.mil. So, for the entire AETC Public Affairs Office, I'm Dan Hawkins, we'll talk to you next time on Developing Mach 21 Airmen. (dramatic music)